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RIP Prince, A Legendary Musician With A Complicated Internet History (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: Reflecting on the popular musician's uneasy relationship with the Internet and social media upon the 57-year-old surprising death. In 2010, Prince "famously shuttered his LotusFlow3r.com website," proclaiming that "The Internet is completely over... All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." In 2014, The Guardian ran a story titled "Prince quits the Internet," after the singer deleted his social media accounts. He filed a lawsuit against his fans, which was later dropped, for sharing bootlegged copies of his music online. He even banned fans from taking smartphone photos at his concerts in 2013. Prince did seem to open up to the Internet to some degree in the past couple years. Prince's HTNRUN album was posted on Jay Z's Tidal music site last year. In Silicon Valley, Prince is being remembered as a social innovator and a passionate advocate for Black youth," inspiring YesWeCode, Van Jones' initiative to teach 100,000 low-income kids to write code, and hackathons across the country to expose kids in underserved communities to computer science. Bob Brown from Networkworld writes, "News of Prince's death Thursday briefly crashed the TMZ news site. From there, fans flocked to the Internet and social media to mourn this music star who did his darnedest to stay off the grid." RIP Prince.
Tribute from Bloom County
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
The rumors floating around was that it must have had something to do with the flu he was suffering for the last week or two. He was pretty religious (a Jehovah's Witness, as ironic and odd as that may seem), so I have my doubts that he died of drugs. I'm wagering either a misdiagnosis of a more severe ailment, or a flu that went out of control (this can happen, and influenza still is a major killer).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
James Brown and Jimi Hendrix all rolled into one
Saw him live many times and it was always a kick ass show
Compared to the shit today, he truly was a musical genius
A college roommate's girlfriend died of the flu. She was a normal, healthy 20 year old until that point.
You might also want to look at his live performance at the 2007 Super Bowl. That was the last one, by the way, that did not use any pre-recorded tracks.
As Prince like to say, "When I go on stage, my mike is ON. I'm live, not memorex."
You are welcome on my lawn.
The record company put restrictions on when and where he could use his stage name of "Prince".
He sidestepped that with the "formerly known as" label.
I'd never thought much about Prince and wouldn't you know while stumbling around YouTube I found a very impressive all-star performance of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. His solo starts around 3:30...
Prince was not his "stage name". Prince was his REAL NAME. His mother named him that and it was on his birth certificate. He went by that name his entire life. That's why it was such bullshit that his record company tried to claim copyright. It wasn't some silly made-up stage name like Madonna or Jon Stewart. It was his real name.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Clearly you haven't seen him live. Feel free to dislike the man, and/or his music -- But "simplistic" objectively doesn't apply.